


Joke’s on Us

by SerialKillerQueen



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: (Only a reference in one line for the previous two tags), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Death, Canon Rewrite, Character Death Fix, Dysfunctional Relationships, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jeremiah was always insane, Jerome loves his brother deep down, Masochism, Self-Destruction, Slight OOC, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, canon warnings apply, do not copy to another site, exploring the twins’ dynamic since canon didn’t, unbeta’d we die like mne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 15:24:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20909855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerialKillerQueen/pseuds/SerialKillerQueen
Summary: Jerome is merciful to his wayward twin, Jeremiah can’t ignore him any longer. (Everything is still terrible).





	Joke’s on Us

**Author's Note:**

> Bottom AN may clear some things up. I don’t own Gotham nor Batman, all rights go to their respective owners.

“Hello, brother.”

Jeremiah felt a wave of pure dread wash over him at that awful rasping voice.

_”I would never hurt you.”_

What a joke.

(A little voice in the back of his mind whispers that Jerome never had hurt him though, it’d been him who cut open that stray cat and blamed his elder brother, it’d been him who lit his own bed on fire and insisted it was Jerome because he _knew -_)

And then there’s a gun a few feet from his face and he jolts.

“So, how you been? Oh, you look great.”

Up close the scars are particularly grotesque.

The laugh is familiar, Jerome used to avoid laughing around anyone besides him (Jeremiah still avoids laughing around anyone at all).

“To think I used to be the handsome one, right?”

Jerome always was prone to vanity, more than he’d ever been, the scars probably do bother him in some way.

He had more pressing concerns though.

“H-how’d you find your way through the maze?”

“Oh, bro, we might not look the same anymore, but we still,” a finger jabs him in the forehead and he grimaces faintly, “think the same. Plus, you used to draw those stupid things all the time as a kid. I paid _attention._”

Jeremiah’s eyes shifted away nervously. And here the whole reason he’d gotten himself shipped away was because of their similarities, and yet he’d not thought those similarities would let his brother figure out the very thing designed to hold him. Foolish.

He’s brought out of his thoughts by Jerome speaking again, this time to the two men behind him.

“Hey, uh, hat head, take Crane, find Jimbo and his bearded sidekick. Kill them.”

He just hopes they don’t find Ecco…

“I've been waiting for this moment for _fifteen years._”

It has been that long, hasn’t it? He hasn’t seen his twin, his other half, since they were 9. And he’s spent every one of those years living in fear, building a maze that would hide and hold them both.

“Ever since you ran away in the middle of the night like a coward.”

His voice trembles faintly, “You’re insane.”

His brother’s is mocking, “Yeah.”

“I tried telling Mom, but she didn’t want to listen to me.”

One time he’d tried to tell her about both of them, that it was _both_ of them. But she couldn’t hear that, not about him, not about the favorite.

“You blame me for everything that’s gone wrong in your life, but the truth is, Jerome, you were _born_ bad.”

_And you weren’t?_

Jerome nods in a faux serious manner.

“Born bad, huh? So that’s why you made her think I tried to kill you, right?”

Once again he can’t meet his eyes.

“Yeah we both -”

Jerome’s voice morphs into a snarl.

“What was it again? What was it? I put a blade to your throat? No, no, no. I tried to light you on fire!”

“We both know you wanted to!”

_I wanted you to, I wanted to._

Jerome just laughs, and he knows, Jeremiah can see that he knows.

He swallows, shifting anxiously, “Okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that, but I didn’t have a choice, and I was right.”

He’d been trying to save them both.

Jerome grins again and hmms in a mocking manner.

Jeremiah’s voice trembles, “You killed our mother.”

“...She did deserve it though. After that _whore_ took you away, she gave up on me. Poisoned by your stories. You turned them all against me. My own flesh and blood!”

He feels the gun brush against his cheek, almost tenderly.

“I guess it’s like what they say, ‘We all could go insane with just one bad day.’”

Jerome laughs again and pats him on the face and he is just.

Resigned.

“What are you gonna do to me, Jerome?”

Jerome makes a mock confused face, like he doesn’t know what he’s getting at.

He doesn’t answer, and before Jeremiah can ask again the two… oddly dressed men Jerome brought with him come running around the corner...Rhyming?

Before he can try to figure that out Detective Gordon and Bullock come into view, chasing them, he tries to run and Jerome yanks him back with an arm around his neck, gun pressing to his temple.

“Get any closer and I splatter him! I’m gonna splatter broski!”

Gordon looks disbelieving.

“No you won’t. If you wanted him dead you would’ve killed him already.”

And… Jeremiah thinks he’s right, that’s not what Jerome’s after.

“He’s right. See you around little brother, I’ve got a city to drive insane.”

And his head is yanked back and a kiss is placed on his forehead, and then he’s pushed to the ground and Jerome is gone, laugh echoing out.

It won’t be long before Gordon contacts him.

Jerome was shot, but he survived, and allowed himself to be taken to Arkham Asylum willingly.

And Jeremiah wonders if he can continue to act like his other self doesn’t exist.

_Look at that, Jerome’s prodigal little brother had come to see him in the nuthouse._

_Good, he only stayed here for him, it was the only way Jeremiah would dare to go near him, when he was restrained, when he couldn’t wrap his hands around his throat._

_He would stay in his cage for now, would let his brother see he’d _forgiven_ him. He could be patient. For his only remaining _family_ he could be patient._

_(Only remaining family because of Jerome but that was neither here nor there. The whore had deserved it, the old man and his _wonderful_ uncle had deserved it, so did Jeremiah for turning them against him, but he was supposed to be the example wasn’t he? The big brother. And his little sibling had convinced himself he was _sane_ in his absence. ...Hadn’t he?)._

_And when Jeremiah realized that he’d been forgiven, he would escape and go to him with his toxin in tow._

_He would set him _free.__

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never written for this fandom and these two were far from the easiest to start with, I apologize if it’s lacking (although some OOC was intended, just not to a severe degree). I think that in canon Jerome’s desire to free Jeremiah from sanity was genuine in a way, not just revenge. And I very much subscribe to the “Jeremiah was already insane before the toxin” club. I saw one theory in particular that suggested Jeremiah was trying to sort of save himself by lying about Jerome to their mother and causing her to send him away. That he knew Jerome and him were alike and would ultimately make each other worse. So I adapted it here. I mean Jeremiah was definitely pretty off from the jump, making a maze to keep Jerome lost in forever, lying about him as a child. Dude was off. I consider this a fix it as Jerome doesn’t have the gas plan here (well he does but he’s not going to be sending it to Jeremiah, at least not now), and therefore wouldn’t be okay with dying as he was in the show.  
Some of the specifics and dialogue in this scene were tweaked to work better with this AU.


End file.
